A REVOLUTION IN ADVERTISING!
                    (C)1994 Alan M. Schwartz

We are today faced with paired escalating catastrophes.  On the 
one hand we have vast cadres of disaffected youth who will never 
achieve the existential security or even material wealth of their 
parents, the Baby Boomers.  They are the Grunge Generations 
piercing their body parts, scarifying their flesh, branding their 
skin, tattooing their torsos, writhing in mosh pits, smoking toad 
and otherwise belligerently condemning the restrained, tasteful 
and conservative lifestyles of folks like Keith Richards and Ozzy 
Osbourne.  On the other hand we have the advertising moguls of 
Madison Avenue who would drench their mothers in gasoline and set 
them ablaze in the center of Times Square to secure a fifteen 
second sound bite with an 85 rating and a 50 share for their 
client.  The former are forever poor and melancholy, their nest 
eggs having been scrambled into omelettes and fed to the poor in 
the names of human compassion and arcane stupidity.  The latter 
are bursting with wealth and seek only the opportunity to impress 
their will upon others for a 10% commission.

In ancient times, the 1960s, product endorsements were not tied 
into media circuses. Try as they might, no Baby Boomers could 
find Mighty Mouse sweat shirts at the local toy emporium.  That 
quickly changed, and the money flowed abundantly - though growth, 
not sustenance, is the name of the game.  The taste rapidly 
cloyed.  Barney is a saccharine pestilence.  We came about full 
circle as the products drove the media.  GI Joe and his ilk 
plagued the airwaves as cartoons.  Corporate logos emblazon every 
manner and form of clothing, collectibles, mugs... the whole 
mercantile world is a billboard.  It is still not enough!

Have you ever seen a racing car driver and his vehicle?  An 
unquenchable urgency for huge cash disbursements to defray the 
cost of hardware stokes a monstrous dependence upon endorsements 
and patronage.  Fabric and paint are hardly to be seen, buried as 
they are beneath so many sponsors' strident logos.  Generations X 
and Y sense their looming lifelong ruination and arrive at the 
same desperate conclusion:  Need cash; need cash now; need lots 
of cash now and forever and ever!  What substance of value can 
they offer in trade?  The Third world already has a lock on 
corneas and organs.

Even a small tattoo or branding costs a hundred dollars.  The 
price rises as more than the square of the art's dimensional 
increase.  Good trade awards profits in both directions.  If 
flesh is to be mortified, why not with the Pepsi logo - for free! 
- plus say $10/month for life as long as the tattoo is retained 
unaltered?  We have seen the future and it works.  SKINVERTISING!

Disaffected youth could secure permanent incomes of hundreds of 
Skinvertising dollars a month merely for surrendering in trade 
the blank canvas of their bodies to the insatiable hunger for our 
attention of advertising.  A carefully planned body suit of 
colors could net its proprietor a cumulative lifetime sinecure of 
hundreds of thousands of dollars with less chronic inconvenience 
than that of sitting through twelve minutes of advertising every 
TV hour.  A McDonalds' facial tattoo could be the difference 
between a twenty year old youth presenting 20% fat hamburger or a 
porterhouse steak at the supermarket checkout counter.

Advertisers have within their grasp the most visible and 
permanent advertising campaign in history, relegating legendary 
Burma Shave signs to a historical footnote.  Think of the 
persuasion they could exert as a family of fundamentally 
dysfunctional people feels the mounting needs of medical bills, 
mortgage, leaking roof, car payments, credit card invoices, 
dental braces...

"Honey, we have to give your bikini line to New Blue Ajax; the 
kids need their braces tightened and my chest is already 
covered."

As huge segments of the population seek to cash in on the 
Skinvertising opportunity there will not be enough quality tattoo 
artists to go around.  Rampant unemployment among those engineers 
and computer programmers formerly retained within the defense 
production sector will be solved.  CAD/CAM digital dermal 
embroidery will restore full employment and five axis mobility to 
practitioners of precision engineering and manufacturing.  They 
can do the test runs on themselves, assuring spending money in 
the here and now plus continuing pensions after retirement.

With the Grunge Generations taken carefully in hand to cheerfully 
walk in the footsteps of Hippies co-opted into Yuppies, the 
United States will again be assured of an indentured cohort of 
parents to perpetuate the System.  Now, there is a product worth 
owning!